ESEA co-founder Craig "Torbull" Levine has issued a statement to shed some more light into the scandal involving the Bitcoin scandal.

The gaming community woke up to the news that a malware which used the users' graphic card to mine for Bitcoins, was coded into ESEA's client on April 14th and had been running ever since, raising more than $3,600 in this two-week period.

ESEA chief Eric "lpkane" Thunberg was quick to respond to accusations and stated it was an April Fools' joke gone wrong. The code was allegedly abandoned after being tested on some admins' account and was released by accident.

After an initial reaction on ESEA's forums, Levine has now put together a statement in which he distanced himself from this action, which according to him was the work of an employee who "used the test code for his own personal gain."

Levine noted that ESEA decided last month that the mining feature was something that was not worth exploring and that all the necessary internal steps "to ensure nothing like this ever happens again" will be taken.

The $3,713.55 that were raised through mining bitcoins will be donated to the American Cancer Society, while the prize pool for ESEA season 14 will be increased by the same amount.

"Throughout the history of gaming and e-sports, there have been scams and straight up theft by players, teams, event organizers, and even “sponsors.” Over the past ten years ESEA has prided itself on being an upstanding member of the gaming community by providing a high quality service, paying out prize money, and being upfront and transparent with you, the community. We worked hard to build your trust and often took the longer, slower, and more meticulous road than others. That approach has paid off as we had success with our premium service and league. Over the two weeks we failed our community. "ESEA’s goal is to provide our community with cutting edge technology and tools. Whenever possible, the management and owners at ESEA initiate private tests on potential new products and tools that might interest our community. With the whole fervor around Bitcoin, we did conduct some internal tests with the Client on only two of our own, consenting administrators’ accounts to see how the mining process worked and determine whether it was a feature that we might want to add in the future. We thought this might be an exciting new tool that we could provide to our community. Ultimately, we decided that it was not. "On April 13, 2013, after the initial tests, ESEA informed those involved in the test that we were killing the project and they should stop using the beta test. It came to our attention last night, however, that an employee who was involved in the test has been using the test code for his own personal gain since April 13, 2013. What transpired the past two weeks is a case of an employee acting on his own and without authorization to access our community through our company’s resources. We are extremely disappointed and concerned by the unauthorized actions of this unauthorized individual. As of this morning, ESEA has made sure that all Bitcoin mining has stopped. ESEA is also in the process of taking all necessary steps internally to ensure that nothing like this ever happens again. "The owners and management at ESEA all apologize to each of you that were impacted by the recent events and intend to make things right. ESEA has issued a free month of ESEA Premium to all of our community members who were enrolled in Premium for the month of April. We also ask anyone who has experienced any physical damage to their computers to open an ESEA support ticket. "In an effort to maintain complete transparency, we have released all of the Bitcoin wallet addresses as well as data dumps of the wallets themselves. The value of the mined Bitcoins was $3,713.55 and ESEA will be donating 100% of the $3,713.55 to the American Cancer Society. ESEA will also match 100% of this amount for a total of $7,427.10 donated. ESEA is also increasing the Season 14 League prize pot by $3,713.55. "As a team, we work hard to create cool things and we’ve worked even harder to consistently do things the right way. While it’s incredibly disturbing and disappointing that this happened, we’re committed to improving ourselves and rebuilding trust with our community."

I work for film/movie editing (creating artificial effects) and that takes a lot of pc powers. Believe me that you rather want for example some (one) heavy movie effect to be done (by computer) in 15min instead of 5 hours..

It saves time and money. And at the moment, im only able to use my laptop that cant do those effects even in 5 hours.. Thats why its not only computer prize that is needed to be compensated. It is also salaries that i loose every moment when i cannot use my "work computer"

I was just thinking how bad a computer could get damaged. I do 3D animation and believe you me some renders can take weeks and leaving your computer idling that long doing heavy processing for the animation itself and then on top of that added with a Bitcoin miner in the background could fuck your shit up big time.

What you work for universal studios? I work for a filmmaking company aswell. But they don;t even use those kind of computers. Would like to know what kind of programs you use. And which effects take 15 minutes to be done....

I highly doubt this. 11k pc? You probably didn't have the proper power supply/ventilation. Don't blame this on ESEA, which would only effect your video card if anything. Plus with an 11k PC you shouldn't have noticed any issues. Stop trying to take advantage of a situation to make a monetary gain you pig.

Normally if some program uses much CPU power, computer works just fine, because OS + manufacturer drivers prevent any programs using processor too much power. Proper power supply / ventilation doesn't help if your processor works over 150% of its safety limits, because of rogue program that have bypassed normal security limits..

Most likely video card was damaged because of short circuit that happened after motherboard was overloaded / damaged after too much heat caused by processor.

According to windows security logs ESEA Client bypassed "safety levels" to get more calculation power and eventually caused heavy crash.

After I did some resource work around this matter, I found out that it ain't unusual that illegal bitcoint collectors overload normal processor security limits to gain maximum profit for program creators..

ahahah so, your 11k computer could not support a "little" tweak on the eseaclient? you should be ashamed of trying to get money from this, you are not better than the guys from esea that implemented the scam.

>we pretend we are upset
>we are donating your money to charity for tax cuts
>we wont mention who's guilty
>we wont punish who's guilty
>ipkane and jaguar both knew about it, we wont punish them
>we pretend like you'll get reimbursement for something
>we pretend like we didn't just knowingly try to steal from you
>here's some shitty premium codes, now forget about this

"ESEA's goal is to provide our community with cutting edge technology and tools."

Why the hell do i hear this sentence all the time if someone wants to sell you their garbage beside that was there to decide where the money is going? Was there a vote what the community wants? Its always the same we donate a sum to a charitable purpose but none can prove it.

And what is going to happend with this so called employee? Might this employee have a way too high rank to get fired?

So in the end they feel all bad and sorry and keep going. Great really great.

I hope there are some really angry americans more angry than me which sue the shit out of you :D

Dude I live in Sweden.
We have two(fuck yeah environmentalist retards) nuclear powerplants for the entire country, hydroelectricity is the most common source of our energy. Less rain makes our electricity more expensive.
Now our power is still fairly cheap compared to some countries in Europe but I can understand people being affected by it.

uhhh, a political discussion on HLTV. I'm surprised, I must admit.
when you read the majority of posts on this site you tend to forget that there are actually people reflecting on politics in the CS community.
just had to get that off my chest...

It's communication, they have to say that they are concerned, or people might say they're not. AND they have to say they apologize, AND they have to say that it'll never happen again. Communication seems so stupid from the outside, but if you don't apply the basic rules, even a message with the purest intentions can appear arrogant and uncaring.

Now that we have more informations, the whole story seems believable, and the redeeming actions are a bit better, but they still have a long way to go before getting back people's trust.

Basically they're still investigating.. but we pretty much know the only two individuals who had access to the client and known of this were Lpkane and Jaguar. My POV is that Lpkane will buy the silence of Jaguar, Jaguar will take the fall and get "fired" by Torbull and Lpkane and they'll try to get our trust back. But giving the money to charity (aka tax cuts) might look nice at first but its still doesn't cover any of what happened.

im not only talking about GPUs, electrical bills of certain individuals have been doubled because of this.. it was proven by the police (a guy was arrested in BC) that running Bitcoin Miners can take the same amount of powers it take to grow weed inside = expensive.

i think this is because esea hierarchy is one where people cannot be replaced immediately. did you really expect them to impulsively fire either a co-owner or the guy who runs the client? do you really see that as ideal?

i know this probably sounds like a cop-out and you can feel free to disregard this if you wish, but lpkane is a highly sarcastic person and every single person from NA who read this knew it was a joke.

i meant that post was a joke. obviously they are in the wrong for using their customers as a botnet. but as ESEA has made their bitcoin wallets public we have some evidence that they are not lying about when the mining started.

I don't leave the client running after playing matches or anything like that luckily. I'm sure there were a lot of people with high electricity bills buttttt.. I guess some of us could be considered lucky.

I wonder if the bitcoin miner was set to only mine off AMD gpu's? When I read about bitcoin mining before nvidia's cards don't even compare to amd's in terms of mhash/s. Just saying cause I didn't notice anything in the short time I had the client running and I have a Nvidia card.

seriously lpkane has been such a fucking straight up dick to the community since the begining. fuck that guy and i hope this shit just keeps getting worse for esea. i dont give a fuck if it means the end of their league. right now there is a demand for a strong csgo community and hopfully something new will be created in esea's wake.

Sucks for Torbull. I think Jaguar will definitely lose his job... while he deserves it, that sucks since he was the mastermind behind all that was good (and I guess 'bad' now) in the ESEA client. As for lpkane, I have no idea. Don't Torbull and lpkane co-own ESEA? Will lpkane 'step down'?

There are a few key points here that a lot of you are failing to understand.

1) If Torbull is to be believed, the mining code was created and intended as a feature for ESEA. Ultimately it was not used after better heads prevailed. That means the code was written, and only Lpkane or Jaguar had the means to actually implement it (they're the only ones with access to the source code for ESEA client).

2)ESEA is much more profitable than 3,713.55 USD mined over 2 weeks. Lpkane stands to lose a lot of money in this little scam, so this obviously suggests that it was Jaguar acting on his own.

3)If we conclude that it was Jaguar acting on his own, then we have a perfect explanation as to why Lpkane gave out false information when the issue was first brought up. Jaguar had to have been the one with access to the wallets for the bitcoins, so it had to have been him who gave the numbers to Lpkane. However, after further investigation by Lpkane, it became apparent that there was more money than previously thought. He then releases another statement saying the real amount of money is somewhere around $3,713.55. Throughout this entire event, Lpkane is still acting unprofessionally (as he always does) and attempts to blow it off. It's obvious he doesn't understand the consequences, nor does he even suspect that it was done purposefully. His actions are what a lot of people on ESEA have quarrel with, but it should be noted that it doesn't mean he had a knowing part in the scam.

4)As for Torbulls statement, a lot of people are forgetting the fact that an extra $3,713.55 from ESEA's own wallets is being added to charity on top of the amount taken from the mining. They're also adding another $3,713.55 to the league prize purse. This means they're losing a total of $7427.1 USD because of this fiasco. Whatever money they hold because of tax write offs will not cover this loss. On top of this, they've also committed themselves to refunding anyone who has incurred hardware damage due to the mining. The system they have in place is very well thought out (the client recorded the unique ID of everyone's GPU).

5)The reason they cannot release the name of the individual is because it's Jaguar. He codes the AC. They cannot simply fire the guy who is in possession of all the knowledge pertaining to their world class client. He can easily turn around and sell his information to Organner or any other cheating enterprise. He already fucked ESEA hard by trying to pull off this little scam, so there's obviously good reason to think he's capable of doing more. Torbull is probably trying to find a solution to this problem right now.

Anyway, this is just my take on the whole situation. I hope some of you understand it a little more clearly. If there's anything I missed, let me know.

1) If Torbull is to be believed, the mining code was created and intended as a feature for ESEA. Ultimately it was not used after better heads prevailed. That means the code was written, and only Lpkane or Jaguar had the means to actually implement it (they're the only ones with access to the source code for ESEA client).

firstly that assumes torbull is telling the truth and not just covering up further. assuming he was telling the truth how did they ever think a "feature" that decreases the service life of the user's gpu was a good idea?

2)ESEA is much more profitable than 3,713.55 USD mined over 2 weeks. Lpkane stands to lose a lot of money in this little scam, so this obviously suggests that it was Jaguar acting on his own.

you are basically again assuming lpkane had nothing to do with it. it has been proven again and again that lpkane doesnt give a damn about the community and only wants to increase his own profits. what better way to do it than to hide a miner in the client. if someone hadnt noticed it would still be going on.

3)If we conclude that it was Jaguar acting on his own, then we have a perfect explanation as to why Lpkane gave out false information when the issue was first brought up. Jaguar had to have been the one with access to the wallets for the bitcoins, so it had to have been him who gave the numbers to Lpkane. However, after further investigation by Lpkane, it became apparent that there was more money than previously thought. He then releases another statement saying the real amount of money is somewhere around $3,713.55. Throughout this entire event, Lpkane is still acting unprofessionally (as he always does) and attempts to blow it off. It's obvious he doesn't understand the consequences, nor does he even suspect that it was done purposefully. His actions are what a lot of people on ESEA have quarrel with, but it should be noted that it doesn't mean he had a knowing part in the scam.

if it was jaguar acting on his own how did lpkane manage to procure wallet info so quickly? why repeatedly state that hes not worried about it? and why reply before you had gotten all of the facts?

4)As for Torbulls statement, a lot of people are forgetting the fact that an extra $3,713.55 from ESEA's own wallets is being added to charity on top of the amount taken from the mining. They're also adding another $3,713.55 to the league prize purse. This means they're losing a total of $7427.1 USD because of this fiasco. Whatever money they hold because of tax write offs will not cover this loss. On top of this, they've also committed themselves to refunding anyone who has incurred hardware damage due to the mining. The system they have in place is very well thought out (the client recorded the unique ID of everyone's GPU).

as you yourself said 7k to esea is chump change. in the end theyre doing it to try to regain some trust. not out of any duty. a loss of 7k now would mean they get to keep their ridiculous profits from esea going. as well, if it was an "unauthorized" individual how the hell did they manage to put the miner into the code accidentally and how does torbull expect to get the money back? when we see proof that they are compensating people for their burned hardware then ill believe it. right now its another pr stunt.

5)The reason they cannot release the name of the individual is because it's Jaguar. He codes the AC. They cannot simply fire the guy who is in possession of all the knowledge pertaining to their world class client. He can easily turn around and sell his information to Organner or any other cheating enterprise. He already fucked ESEA hard by trying to pull off this little scam, so there's obviously good reason to think he's capable of doing more. Torbull is probably trying to find a solution to this problem right now.]

Torbull has a tremendous amount to lose from this, the same as Lpkane. He's been with the CS community since its inception. There's 0 reason to think he's lying, especially considering that he's not even a part of the programming team at ESEA.

The miner wouldn't still be going on because someone would have noticed it. You don't seem to understand that it was making everyone's computer burn up and stress out their GPU's. It took 2 weeks to figure out it was client. 2 days prior to this, one member posted on ESEA letting everyone know his computer had been turned into a slave to mine bit coins. He assumed he had received the malware from Netcode Illuminati. One day later, another member figures out it was from the ESEA client. It is absolutely unbelievable to think this could have gone on for a long period of time. The ESEA community is very computer savvy. It's honestly shocking it lasted for 2 weeks.

Lpkane didn't procure the wallet information quickly. He got information from Jaguar, and relayed it. That's it. It actually took him a bit of time to release the wallet to the ESEA community when asked for it on the forums. He thought he had all of the facts. What he didn't know is that he was being lied to. Get your facts straight, bub.

I never said they weren't going to fire Jaguar. You have the incredible ability to write, but not read. They probably will fire Jaguar, and sue him for that matter. There's not a chance in hell Torbull will allow him to remain affiliated with ESEA if he ever expects to regain our trust.

lpkane hasnt posted on the esea forums since torbull told him to keep his retaded mouth shut while he fixes this mess.

there are pics of lpkane saying he doesnt need a dedicated farming rig since he has access to all those idling esea accounts.
the whole thing smells of jaguar and lpkane making up this plan together and jag is going to end up taking the fall for it because torbull always covers lpkane's back.

people had been filing support tickets about esea showing up on avg since the 14th and no one did anything about it since they already knew what was causing it.

it took a user with knowledge actually digging into it to discover what was happening. if he hadnt this would still be going on. a user not the coder of the actual client found the error. what does taht tell you?

as for any "facts" that come from lpkane, ill take it with a grain of salt. his "at least your fried gfx card went to a good cause" really pushes it over the edge.

EDIT: just found the timing for the wallet upload

12 minutes between the user asking lpkane for the wallet info and kane posting it in his thread. id call that quick

i'm for one not convinced that the $3,713.55 is all they got. maybe they mined coins before. maybe all they are paying out is actually from mined coins. this is all speculation but has at least as firm foundation as torbull's statement. him not knowing anything, i repeat _anything_, about this is quite unbelievable.

If they know the amount which was made out of the bitcoins i assume they also got the money: So they just lose 3,713,55
I mean if jaguar is still working for them he has to give it back.

About the coding stuff and the "secret informations" Organner already works on ESEA client at least the aimer. You always need to update your code if you want a good anti cheat and it sounds like jaguar is the only person in the world to do this stuff?

Hes a qualified person no doubt but come on if they really want to change things in a positive way fire him and get more qualified people because on that thing with the scam he wasnt trustworthy enough

A lot of Europeans were effected too. Why does it all go to the American Cancer Charity?
Don't get me wrong, I approve of it as it's 999x better than going to the prizepot.
And I know that they are an American company etc, but they "stole" from Europe as well, and now it's benefiting their own country.

Again, don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those guys that is Europe VS America. It just sparked into my mind, that maybe people will be not upset, but perhaps not 100% satisfied by this decisions. Again, a decision 999x times better than before! :)

4)As for Torbulls statement, a lot of people are forgetting the fact that an extra $3,713.55 from ESEA's own wallets is being added to charity on top of the amount taken from the mining. They're also adding another $3,713.55 to the league prize purse. This means they're losing a total of $7427.1 USD because of this fiasco. Whatever money they hold because of tax write offs will not cover this loss. On top of this, they've also committed themselves to refunding anyone who has incurred hardware damage due to the mining. The system they have in place is very well thought out (the client recorded the unique ID of everyone's GPU).

I'm sure USA healthcare system already knows the cure to cancer. But hey - that would take away so much money doctors/pharmaceutical companies make from Oncology/chemotherapy... So why release it! Instead just give people false hope and make them think actually "donating" to a cancer society will help.

how about you unban everyone lpkane banned that said something negative about bigg, yes people got 10 year bans for that or get rid of bigg and his big ego and get a real admin in his place that will actually do his job and not be a lazy fuck like him?

imo after this only idiots or heavy nerds will run their software.
their story is pure bullshit. they have more $ from it and have own place where they mine that. this is big PR for them. that 2 guys are not the only ones who was invested into this. look just this http://play.esea.net/index.php?s=forums&d=topi..
he is just asking for users to post their pc ; and he post own pc where he have 2 amd cards and 100% he mine on this pc.

People who think it isn't a big deal are obviously kids who sit at home and get payed everything from their parents.

What ESEA did was actual theft.

They hacked our PCs to make us pay more for electricity to take that money into their own pockets. Accepting that they would likely damage our hardware in the process. You can see how much they stole on your increased electricity bill. And you'll maybe notice your GPU failing earlier than expected as a side effect.

Where I live, GPU bitcoin mining currently creates almost as much money as you have to pay in electricity to power the PC system, so its basically a 1:1 transfer of my money into their bank accounts. With my hardware deteriorating on my expense in the process.

It is the same thing as if they come into my house at night, steal some money out of my wallet while damaging some stuff on their way in.

Except that they didn't do it once or twice but to thousands upon thousands of people all over the world. And now expect to get away with it with some US charity donation and 5$ premium for people. Refusing to give away who is responsible, not wanting to fire anyone for it and hoping to continue "business" as usual.

--

Imagine this, a single thief which comes to your house risks jail, getting shot and worse, but these suckers who are rich anyways do it to thousands of people, and then try to continue business as usual when they are caught.